A future language built for the ear
The songs in NieR:Automata are not sung in a real-world language. Their vocal language, often called Chaos language, was created by singer Emi Evans to make the music sound as if it came from a distant future. Rather than translating ordinary lyrics, Evans shaped invented words around the sound of languages changing over time.
That choice gives the vocals a recognizable human texture without letting listeners pin down what the singer is saying. The words can feel familiar—like fragments of speech—yet remain just beyond comprehension.
Why the lyrics resist translation
A readable lyric would give a song a clear, immediate meaning. These invented lyrics do something different: they let the voice carry emotion while leaving the listener without a verbal explanation. The melody, phrasing, and tone can suggest grief or longing, but the words do not settle those feelings into a specific statement.
The language also helps the soundtrack feel as though it belongs to the game’s imagined world rather than to the present day. Its strange familiarity is deliberate: the vocals sound like language, but they do not ask to be decoded as one. That makes the songs feel at once intimate and distant.
